more pseudo-security

[adrian_turtle]

My landlord recently posted signs to announce that
federal law requires mailboxes to be locked at all
times. He says this is a matter of security, which
I do not believe (I have doubts that it's even a law,
though I don't know where the misunderstanding or lie
was introduced.) This "law" refers to the little
boxes where tenants receive incoming mail. Unless
a tenant is getting a package, or too much mail to
fit in the box...in which case the postal worker just
puts the extra mail on the table by the mailboxes, to
be picked up. There is no pretense of security for
outgoing mail from the apartment building. We just
put that in a basket by the door for the postal worker
to pick up when he comes by.

When I lived in a house, the mailbox didn't have a
lock. When I lived in apartments in smaller buildings,
sometimes the mail was delivered to cubbyholes that
couldn't be locked. Sometimes the mail for all the
flats in the building was dumped all together in a
box, and whichever tenant got to it first would sort
it. In the one building which had locks on the mailboxes,
it never mattered if anyone forgot to lock his or her
box.

I don't know if this is a real law that some idiots
actually wrote recently, thinking that it would make
anyone any safer. If so, I find the stupidity of it
staggering. It would make more sense if there was a
rule that the big blue-and-white drop boxes on the
street for outgoing mail had to kept locked. Or even
a rule that owners of apartment buildings had to
provide *lockable* private mailboxes for all their
tenants.